Page:The Yellow Book - 08.djvu/147

written. So I hastened down Grosvenor Place, purposing to take the train at Victoria.

The fog had become so much denser during the last hour, that I was quite glad to have the friendly wall of Buckingham Palace Garden as a guide. With my left hand trailing against it, I slowly and cautiously groped my way, till I drew near the spot where Grosvenor Place turns sharply round to the left into Little Grosvenor Place. There an adventure befell me. At this point, where the pavement narrows, I was crouching under the lee of the wall, to remove myself as far as possible from a brilliantly lamped Parcels Post van that came rattling through the fog, when suddenly a man dropped upon me from the top of the wall. He doubled himself up as he fell, alighting gracefully upon my head, enveloping me as if he were an extinguisher, and I a candle. At the same time a metal vessel, escaping from his hands by the violence of the shock, clanged upon the pavement, while a smaller object struck sharply against my foot.

I tumbled incontinently upon the pavement, while my visitor, recovering himself while I was still blinking, picked up the metal vessel, which I observed had burst open, and disappeared into the fog.

For a moment I sat motionless, unhurt, but confused with amazement. The person who had dropped so indecorously over the garden wall was my yellow friend of the afternoon, and the metal object which had burst open as he fell was the case that the Raja of Pepperthala had concealed beneath the blanket a few hours before.

As I was considering the bearings of this new development upon my article there fell upon the hushed air, from the direction of the Palace, a wail, repeated three times, so eerie, so pregnant with despair, that I felt almost as if something had cut into atissue